What does the CSIRO think that it’s doing?

If the CSIRO ever squeals about not having enough money or putting up with cramped offices, just ask the question: why does the CSIRO employ a social psychologist and spend precious resources on asking members of the public what they think about climate change? And note that this survey is undertaken annually. Why?

And why would Zoe be ‘surprised’ at the findings? I guess that’s because she has already made up her mind.

On a list of 16 issues ranging from health and cost of living to terrorism and drug problems, climate change came in at just 14th.

Zoe Leviston, a social psychologist at CSIRO and lead author of the survey, said the ranking was “surprisingly low”, … [and] may reflect people turning off the issue because it had become so politicised, artificially pulling the ranking down.

24 Responses to What does the CSIRO think that it’s doing?

I was on a school committee with a great guy who is a statistician in the CSIRO. When I expressed disrespect for the global warming mindset, he was mightily perturbed – I don’t think he was exposed to any idea of sceptics except the usual strawpersons.

To be fair, CSIRO is a broad church. Just this week it was advocating damming the Gilbert and Einsaleigh rivers, and wacking a stack of Turkey nest along the flinders river to create enough irrigation to make the Ord look like a dinky effort.

I love her words ‘artificially pulling the ranking down’. In other words in her mind the actual public ranking really is a lot higher. This is like the ‘adjustments’ that have to be made to the temperature records to get the approved results.

What CSIRO is doing is eminently sensible…for them. They have so much riding on the CAGW scare that they have to know what will happen with the new government. Public views on the scam are important to them in the same way that illegal operations employ spotters looking for the cops to arrive.

Pharaoah when told of the 7 fat cows and 7 lean cows made Joseph number 2 guy in all of Egypt. Zoe Leviston was probably thinking along similar lines.

Might I suggest that as with the ABC, the closing down of the CSIRO might be a good money saver? How much does it cost per year?

You might, but you’d be on a loser. UN-like the ABC, basic research is one area where Australia definitely punches above its weight.

The heavy lifting comes on the development side of R&D. It has to be done privately because that is where marketability and profit motive are determinative. And sadly, here we lack vision because too many businesses can’t see past tiny markets of 23million, rather than world-wide markets.

I love her words ‘artificially pulling the ranking down’. In other words in her mind the actual public ranking really is a lot higher. This is like the ‘adjustments’ that have to be made to the temperature records to get the approved results.

Well spotted, Ronaldo… I’d expect better from a scientist (though as I pointed out, she isn’t one)

Which indicates to me that Climate Change is primarily a concern of well fed upper middle class folk who’ve got very little to worry about. If you a Filipino living on a garbage dump in Manilla you’re unlikely to be lying in bed at night obsessing about Climate Change, whales or GMOs.

In January 2010, the Pew Research Center asked Americans to rank the importance of twenty-one issues. Climate change came in last.

See also http://www.voxeu.org/article/concern-environment-luxury-good-evidence-google-searches for data on Google searches for “unemployment” and “global warming”. Kahn and Kotchen’s key points are:
• Recessions increase concerns about unemployment at the expense of public interest in climate change.
• the decline in global-warming searches is larger in more Democratic leaning states.
• An increase in a state’s unemployment rate decreases in the probability that Americans think global warming is happening, and reduces the certainty of those who think it is.

Kahn has previously argued that income and price effects explain most variations in the green vote and that the environmental movement should stop saying that half measures will work and the transition to a green economy will be easy and painless.

The CSIRO has been a disaster in respect of AGW; from Sackett’s unbridled support of it, to the Spash controversy to Megan Clarke being the ex head of Rothschilds Australia and running carbon capture programs in a private capacity, to ex Macquarie banker McKeon, to Safford-Smith attending PUP [Planet under Pressure] conferences and spewing out rubbish about sustainability, to its massive investments in renewable bullshit, this is an organisation worse than the ABC.

Seriously, when every major institution in this nation is an orifice for UN and AGW propaganda what hope is there?

One would have thought that Australian Bureau of Statistics would be the people to ask to conduct surveys, since, after-all that is what they do, survey and then provide the statistical analysis of those surveys.

Social-Psychology? Really? So, some-one who is trained to under-stand “group think” is amazed that as a group many people don’t think like she does? Shocked I am… (sarc)

Pursuing the religious theme, if they are a tad short of funding at the moment, perhaps they might like to consider the possibility of passing a collection plate around each Sunday amongst their parishioners, those long-haired, unemployable, vegan, straggly-bearded (both male and female), sandal-wearing, bicycle-riding, soap-phobic, tree-huggers of the Tasmanian Brown Movement.

They might only score a couple of bent shekels and a lentil or three, but that’s what goes with the field of crank religion that they chose to specialize in.

If they’re smart, they’ll be out surveying their pants off while dogged hot weather (I believe it’s called Summer) has some people starting to worry again about climate change – and creating artificial markets and employing battalions of enviro-bureaucrats is an empirically proven way of dealing with such worries.

Given the actual, recorded CO2 sensitivity over the near doubling to date is trivially small, unless the laws of physix changed no Australian alive today will live to see 1 degree.

Everybody now picture a stop 1C warmer, and picture living there. (I’m from SYD, and am picturing Forster.) Got the picture firmly in mind? THAT is the future for your great, great grand kids. Think about the weather in this place. Is it noticeably different to your home? Do they have rain and drinking water?

Psychology became a ‘science’ because that’s what the UN entities treat it as because it is a useful tool to use in education to change the culture. The UN, especially UNESCO, is all about using education and the behavioral sciences to drive social evolution in their desired directions.